maroon booklets. The agent opened them up, glanced at me, then at the passport. I watched this interaction with my stomach in my throat, sick with the tension. But he didn’t seem to be finding anything wrong with the situation. He even asked Enzo what the weather was like in Turin.
“Have a nice trip,” the TSA agent said at last, giving the passports back to Enzo. Then he turned around and left.
“What just happened?” I asked, as Enzo sat across from me and picked up his glass of champagne. He handed me one of the passports. I opened it. My photograph stared back at me, and the name Alberta Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria Montebianco was typed out clearly on the page.
“Is this a fake?” I whispered.
“No, it is not a fake,” Enzo said, smiling slightly.
“But this is me,” I said, turning the passport to get a closer look at my picture. It definitely was me.
Nome: Alberta Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria Montebianco
Sesso: Donna
Luogo di nascita: Poughkeepsie, New York (USA)
Data di nascita: 20 Marzo 1988
Cittadinanza: Italiana
“Because of your ancestry, the Italian government recognizes you as an Italian citizen. We began the paperwork after we learned of your identity. The estate has some connections that proved useful to speed things up.” He gave Luca a passport. “We got a spousal citizenship for you.”
“Wow,” I said. And because I could hold the passport in my hand, see my photo, and read my name on the laminated page, for the first time since learning of my inheritance, I believed that all this life-changing business, this Alberta the countess stuff, was really happening.
We landed in Turin the next day. I knew nothing about Torino, and so Enzo explained that it was a northern industrial city in the Piedmont region, famous for the Fiat 500 and the ancient House of Savoy, of which I was (as it turned out) a distant relation.
A car picked us up at the airport and delivered us to a boutique hotel at the historic center of the city, where we were ushered up a wide marble staircase to a spacious, elegant suite. There was a king-sized bed, a plush carpet, a bathroom with more marble than a monument, and a balcony overlooking a narrow street filled with shops and cafés. I fell into a deep sleep the minute I climbed into bed, a bottomless, disoriented sleep without geography, and woke to fresh flowers on my night table, a bouquet of white roses that filled the air with a rarified fragrance, one that I would thereafter associate with privilege. Tucked into the flowers was a card from the manager: Welcome, Countess Montebianco. Please call my personal number if you should need anything at all.
I doubted we would. The place was incredible, so large I almost forgot that Luca was there, sleeping on the couch across the room. I told myself that I shouldn’t get too excited. We would meet the legal team, hear them out, and be on our way back home in a day or two. Even then, after having seen the DNA report, I was sure that there was a catch, something that would prove the whole thing to be a mistake.
I was still in my pajamas later that afternoon when a knock came at the door. Enzo Roberts, handsome and composed as ever, stood in the hallway. I stepped aside as he breezed into our room, all efficiency. He carried his briefcase, as usual, but in his other hand he had a fistful of shopping bags.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I stopped by a boutique down the way,” he said, gesturing to the bags. “Neither of you had time to pack properly. Try them on and let me know if they are acceptable.”
I peered into the bags and saw stacks of new clothes. It was true that we hadn’t packed much, only carry-on suitcases. There was a black silk dress, a pair of black suede boots, some brown wool trousers, a white silk blouse, and a charcoal suit jacket. I glanced at the price tags and almost choked. The dress alone cost more than my mortgage payment. And the charcoal suit jacket? It could have paid a good portion of my college tuition. Later, after I saw Italians walking in the streets near the hotel, I understood that the clothes were a necessary gift. What we had brought—a few sweaters, jeans, and tennis shoes—would be wildly out of place. If we were to go out wearing such attire, we would be